THE Tembari Children's Care (TCC) Inc is a day care facility at ATS Oro Settlement, 7-Mile, outside of Port Moresby, PNG. To date, it takes care of more than 200 former street children - orphans, abandoned and the unfortunate - by serving them meals twice a day, and providing them early education. Assistance - food and money - is sent by supporters who find merit in the services we provide to these children. At The Center, they are family. For all of these, we need support that is sustainable.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Re-introducing the Tembari Children

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ

A Friend of Tembari

WHEN I met the Tembari kids for the
first time in December of 2009, there were only 78 of them.

To date, Tembari’s beneficiary children
number 175. It used to be about 200 towards late last year, but for one reason
or the other, part of the 25 absentee kids have not been coming for TCC
services regularly while others completely dropped out.

The present 175 Tembari kids are
receiving services such as preschool education, elementary and primary
education alongside the daily feeding that takes place from Monday to Saturday.
What’s more, they are getting a place they can call their home away from home.

We provide them meals every day – an
early dinner – from Monday to Saturday, thanks to our generous donors.

Our beneficiary children are orphans,
abandoned and neglected who live with their “bubu” relatives and guardians
around the village.

At present, TCC’s Preschool Program
covers 70 kids. Of these, 28 are TCC beneficiaries while the other 42 others
are children from the community who are living with a complete set of parents –
mother and father who are financially able to support them.

The outsider-kids are using our
preschool facilities since we are the only preschool center at the village (ATS
Oro Settlement); we have to take them in as part of our functions as a
Community-based Organization (CBO). It is also a deal we signed with Digicel
Foundation when they provided us with two fitted containers that now serve as
classroom and office.

We receive foodstuff donations such as
rice, tinned fish and milk from individual and corporate donors.

To provide services to such a big number
of beneficiaries, TCC requires help from cooks, preschool teachers and others.

During my first year with Tembari
(2010) as volunteer fund/foodstuff chaser, all help was provided by volunteers.
But as I managed to get funding from donors and supporters, the volunteers
demanded that they also be paid for their services just like the pre-school
teachers.

There was a time when we were unable to
pay the preschool teachers as funds ran short and the teachers walked out for
several days, living the preschoolers with nothing to do at the center.

So, when I found new money, we hired a paid
staff to do the daily dirty jobs. These hired staff comprise of three (3) cooks, one (1) center administrator;
and a cleaner (janitor) who would keep the premises in order. This is alongside
the paid preschool teachers.

We have to
maintain a paid staff because this is the only way to keep them working for us
and sustain our services to the children.

I am also
thinking of hiring a night security guard to protect our property from
drunkards, raskols and trouble makers in the village, at a rate of K100 a
fortnight.

The whole village is aware that we are storing substantial foodstuff
in one of our containers, which is a potential magnet for thievery.

The Head
Teacher that we hired is a Certified Teacher who was retrenched sometime ago.
She used to work as Head Teacher at her former school. At Tembari, she is
responsible for designing and evaluating the effectiveness of the curriculum
for our Preschool Program, running in-service training for the two support
teachers, supervising the daily classroom activities, maintaining school
records of individual preschoolers and other pertinent data and coordinating
with the School Principal at Wardstrip on behalf of our elementary
schoolchildren. She also handles a daily class. She lives in the community and
was idle for some time. We realized that she got the experience that would help
improve our early-age education program.

The
Administrative Officer takes care of documenting donations that came in,
monitor the daily withdrawal of foodstuff that would be cooked for the day’s
meal; monitor and record the number of cordial bottles and milk packs used for
the daily feeding; monitor the daily attendance of staff and beneficiary
children during feeding that takes place in the afternoon (early dinner),
taking stock of Tembari properties, liaise with Wardstrip Elementary School and
donors. He also doubles as secretary and do official errands for Tembari.

Most
important, he records spending related to the daily feeding program – cooking
ingredients – checking if they are properly supported with receipts and related
documents. And PMV fares.

The
volunteer auditor from Deloitte has required us that such records of spending
be properly supported with receipts otherwise, money spent without backup docs
would be considered as unaccounted for. This is very difficult for our cooks,
especially when they buy foodstuff (veggies and others) at the Gordon’s market
where receipts are unheard of.

But I am
trying to come up with the necessary forms – vouchers, petty cash vouchers,
receipts, ledgers and others – to meet the requirements for transparency.

We are doing
our best of institute changes in our financial operations because this is the
only way to attract funding donors and assure them of transparency in the use
of the money they donated.

For
instance, I have done away with cheque signatories who are related – husband
and wife. This is the case of Penny Sage-embo and Hayward Sagembo who are both
officers of TCC. Penny is the founder-program coordinator while Hayward is the
president.

Familiar
with the complications resulting from having husband-and-wife cheque signatories,
the volunteer auditor from a prestigious accounting-auditing in POM firm has demanded
that one of them resign his/her signing authority.

I took over
to become the second signatory, while a British expatriate, who actively
supports our pre-school classroom building project, became the third signatory.
So, this time, only Hayward Sagembo, the TCC president, the British
expat-volunteer and I have the signing authority.

But before I
sign any cheque, I see to it that I know the items the money would cover. And
as soon as the items have been bought, I demand that the receipts be given to
me for a tally-up with the drawn cheque.

This job is
quite awkward because I don’t actually see the items that are bought -
ingredients that go into the cooking of the daily meals and many other stuffs;
I only see the receipts, if they are available.

I hope to appropriately handle our cash flows, and keep it going till the next
funding from our generous donors come again - that is after a year.

We are
maintaining two accounts: one at BSP and the other at Westpac.

If you think you can support us in our goal of improving the lives of the Tembari children so that they would have a normal life -- happy and with peace of mind, educated, well-nourished and healthy -- just like the rest of their more-fortunate peers in the community, please let me know.

THE BLOGGER

ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ, A Friend of Tembari Children. Blogger APH came to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 1993 to join The National newspaper as one of its pioneering journalists. Working as Executive Sub Editor, he has remained with the daily, now the country’s No. 1 newspaper, up to these days. He has been a journalist since his university days in Manila back in the late 60s. APH’s involvement with the Tembari children began in January 2010 after he discovered them at a Christmas party for the city’s 500 unfortunate children held at the Botanical Garden in Port Moresby. That day, he was chasing a story for The National, which happened to be that of the unfortunate children in the city. His self-appointed job for Tembari children composed of orphaned, abandoned, neglected and unfortunate children is to look for people and groups who could provide them food, money, health services and facilities necessary to create positive changes in their lives. This job is difficult, but what the heck …!

(Our sponsored Saturday lunch for the 200 Tembari kids costs only K250.00 per sponsor (we usually have two), which covers a special meat (fish or chicken) dish, veggies, steamed rice and cordial drink. The Saturday lunch needs at least two sponsors. Some had given more, allowing us to give the kids a generous heap of the day’s lunch. A rare bonus to the sponsors, along with the bricks they earn each time, is that I personally cook the dish, giving it a personal touch. And as they earn a brick, each of our benefactors also earn a passage into the heart of the Tembari kids, which is also a prepaid ticket to Heaven.)